Home

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

FAABulous: Fantasy Football Pick-ups Week 3

The last person to arrive on the Danny Amendola band wagon was Danny Amendola.(Getty)

FAABulous will recap the week of football activity and point fantasy owners where to spend their hard earned (not really) FAAB or waiver priority. Players will be owned in at least 30% of Yahoo! FFL. This is the one time where mo' money probably wouldn't mean mo' problems.

It's only been two weeks, but that's been enough time to subsequently shatter our concepts of what we thought 2012 fantasy football was going to be. The top point producer is a rookie QB in Washington whose filmed more commercials than TD passes thrown. Two consensus top 10 RBs have less rushing yards combined than one Reggie Bush game, or just 7 yards (21 feet) more than the 1,831st ranked player in Yahoo. And a team that was a favorite to be the worst team in football is 2-0 and just defeated a pre-season favorite to win the Super Bowl in their home debut. Oh, and their best player had 1 catch for 4 yards.

Crazy enough? That leaves plenty of us searching the waivers. Let's see who is deserving of your time.

Danny Amendola, WR - STL (52% owned)
The diminutive WR draws lazy comparisons to Wes Welker was late to his own fantasy football party. Coming off an 85 catch season in 2010, Amendola was pegged to be quite Welkerish in 2011. Well, that ended rather abruptly as Amendola suffered a season ending injury in week 1. While he was certainly forgotten by many pretend pigskinners, he's come back to remind us that his 2011 hype was more than just some experts grasping at straws.
Through the first two games, Amendola has been targeted 25 times and after a huge week 2 ranks 3rd in the league in receiving. He's worthy of a hefty portion of your FAAB because he gets the looks, he gets open, and...

Sam Bradford, QB - STL (22%)
Sam Bradford is his QB. Remember Sam? #1 pick. Threw the ball all over the field. He too was hyped up in 2011 before he too was injured and limited to 10 games. Injuries are nothing new to Bradford's game, but with new found health, he has the talent and the time in the film room to take a big leap this year in the Gateway to the West.

His skill players are lacking, and he doesn't have the big arm of another former #1 pick who was injury prone in Matt Stafford, but could a poor man's Stafford performance be out of the question?

Andrew Hawkins, WR - CIN (12%)
You thought Amendola was short? At 5'7, Hawkins would be up to the 5'11 Amendola's shoulder. But, the great equalizer in sports is speed, and Hawkins is crazy crazy fast. I was thinking about putting him in last week's FAABulous column, but I wanted to see if the Bengals would continue to utilize Hawkins' strengths. It appears his touches will only be growing. People may be waiting for Randall Cobb to break out, but Hawkins is there already.

Andre Brown, RB - NYG (15%)
Tom Coughlin doesn't have a dog house to put the players that catch his ire. When you get in trouble with Coughlin his version of a dog house more closely resembles Bane's prison in Dark Knight Rises. And deep, buried down there is rookie RB David Wilson. After a fumble in the first game of the season, he's been, well under utilized. Ahmad Bradshaw picked up a neck injury, opening the rushing duties to Brown.

PENNY SAVED IS A PENNY EARNEDDonnie Avery, WR - IND (8%)
Avery got some Andrew Luck love on Sunday, but Avery has never been a consistent force. I don't expect him to develop on a young Colts team where Reggie Wayne still owns the targets and Colby Fleener has great chemistry with Luck. Close your pocket books and look elsewhere for catches.

THE 1%Brandon Myers, TE - OAK (1%)
There's not much anyone can take from what Oakland has done thus far. Coming off a short week and flying cross country ended up costing Oakland a brutal loss to Miami, but the 6'3 6th round pick has done enough to gain Carson Palmer's attention. While you would think this team would be built around a vertical passing game utilizing Denarius Moore, Darius Heyward-Bey, and Rod Streater with Darren McFadden storming up and down the field, the passing and running game has been very muted. Myers has averaged 75.5 yards per game thus far, and while he hasn't grabbed a ball in the painted part of the field, he does appear to be building trust with Palmer which can translate to red zone opportunities when they happen.